Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
previous ones that brought them forth. Hence, the origin of life is a set of
self-erasing increasingly complex organizational steps leading to a ratchet-like
form of organization that is able to increase its complexity only by preserving
its basic form. However, once the first form of living organization appeared,
it was not only preserved, but also became the condition of possibility for
further and more complex organizational steps. Therefore the invention of the
basic living organization was qualitatively different from any other precedent
invention in terms of long-term preservation, regardless of the eventual increases
of complexity.
At the beginning, the 'driving force' was nothing but the confluence of
several principles of ordering, like self-assembly, template replication, or self-
organization, merged in the framework of what I have called a nontrivial
self-maintaining organization. Given this special form of self-maintenance, and
provided a long and wide enough scenario, the complementary action of these
principles will lead to a process of increase in complexity.
The key to the beginning of this process is functional recursivity. Every
novelty capable of contributing to a more efficient form of maintenance will
be recruited. This process makes possible the appearance of new, increasingly
complex forms of organization. But the key to their stability and capacity of
preservation is the achievement of a basic autonomy. Only autonomous systems
could attain the threshold of complexity necessary for the appearance of the new
driving force of Natural Selection.
Natural selection brings about a mechanism for exploring new causal relations
in a much wider dimension, which will progressively make the organization
of autonomous systems more complex. But the increase in their complexity
will also produce deep changes, integrating them in a historical and collective
dimension. Self-maintenance transcends the level of the individual, autonomous
organization.
The basic organization of living systems is what generates the mechanism
of Darwinian evolution, which is in turn the driving force that ensures their
long-term maintenance and increase in complexity. But, ultimately, the open-
endedness of the evolutionary process has its roots in that organization.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is supported by the Comisión Interministerial de Ciencia y Tecnología
(CICYT) of Spain, Grants HUM2005-02449/FISO and BMC2003-06957, and
by the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) 9/UPV 00003.230-
15840/2004. The author acknowledges the critical comments of previous versions
of the manuscript made by J. Umerez and A. Etxeberria.
